


Onerous

by hopeassassin



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Camping, F/M, Hiking, Possessive Dai-chan, Touou Academy antics are the best, Unwitting Damsel-in-Distress Satsuki, this had to be done
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 05:49:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10691025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeassassin/pseuds/hopeassassin
Summary: Even though it was called ‘recreational camping’, they were still a sport club. So of course, during outings like this, it was customary to do at least some form of outdoor activity for the duration of their stay. || Tentative AoMomo, one-shot.





	Onerous

**Author's Note:**

> So here’s yours truly’s first submission for AoMomo Week. I’m pretty proud of the idea, but I think it didn’t end up being as impacting as I meant it.
> 
> Day 1 - Prompt: _Burden_.

Touou Academy had been a basketball powerhouse for quite some time.

That being a fact, there was no room for discussion whether or not it hosted some ‘events’ for its players to rejoice over the fact that they’re athletes competing for this particular school and not some other place. Also, events like that served the double purpose of making the boys feel more stimulated to win more and more competitions, so that they’d get sent to an even  _better_ place the next time.

This was why when the basketball club received notice that they were being sent to a mountain hiking weekend out of the prefecture, it didn’t surprise anyone.

It was about time for them to be going on their annual trip as a team.

It was the first time for Wakamatsu attending this kind of event as its head, though. One of its heads, at least. As the captain of the team, he was expected to take full responsibility for the management and well-being of his teammates while they were up on the mountain.

He wasn’t perfect, and he certainly left a lot to be desired in many aspects of his person when it came to relating with the boys, basketball and society in general. Nevertheless, one thing Wakamatsu was certainly  _not_ , was thoughtless.

He knew the weight being responsible for a couple of dozen teenage boys would end up being, and he made sure to check with coach Harasawa the entire way through the preparations for the trip.

He handed out the schedule sheets to everyone and instructed them to pack well in accordance to the place where their recreation camp was going to happen.

Satsuki had taken her schedule, merrily scanned it over, almost immediately memorizing everything that was written on it.

She found it a little surprising that there was no actual mountain hiking or climbing of any sort included.

Even though it was called ‘recreational camping’, they were still a sport club. So of course, during outings like this, it was customary to do at least some form of outdoor activity for the duration of their stay. Research on Touou’s previous camps showed her observation to hold true for pretty much every camping trip so far.

She shrugged to herself, deciding that it was no big deal to begin with. More time for them to enjoy the awesome hot springs the inn they were staying at were famous for.

That was, at least, until she accidentally glanced at Daiki’s schedule.

The discrepancy wasn’t too easy to notice but it was definitely  _there_.

She snatched the piece of paper out of his back pocket where he’d stuffed it just a second prior. She pointedly ignored his disgruntled grumbling at the way she was manhandling him.

Magenta orbs scrutinized the offensive sheet of paper carefully before lifting up to glare at her childhood friend. He didn’t notice her look at all, yawning obliviously while she stared him down.

“What?” he snapped. Half of the sharpness of the response was lost due to his half-lidded bored expression.

While she glowered at him through dangerously narrowed eyes, Satsuki realized that this goofball was not at fault for whatever mistake had occurred. He could barely bring himself to practice without her having to poke him out of bed every day; what was left for caring enough to take part in organizing the club trip?

The person at fault here was, without a doubt, someone who took part in the instigation of the event.

Thus, she waved her hand dismissively at him, rounding in on Wakamatsu and Sakurai who were talking to each other a little ways away from the manager and the ace.

“Wakamatsu-san!” She was trying to keep her voice level, but the stringent notes were starting to settle in. “I need to have a word with you about something.”

The blond looked up, expression twisting in confused curiosity about whatever had Momoi riled up to be using that tone with him – that same tone she usually reserved for Aomine only.

“Can you please explain to me what the meaning of this is?” she demanded imperiously, flashing Daiki’s schedule in Wakamatsu’s face.

She was so irked she forgot to factor in that Wakamatsu needed some space, physically, in order to focus whatever she was pointing out to him.

The captain pushed her hand out of his face far enough to be able to see what she was talking about.

Satsuki knew for sure now that there was some kind of plot involved in this because of the way Wakamatsu blanched a little. He quickly rid his face of the grimace, though, schooling his features into a mask of nonchalance.

“What do you mean, Momoi?”

Satsuki’s eyes narrowed, a warning look flashing through her usually quiescent face. So he’d decided to take the path of playing dumb, eh?

“Why is Dai-chan’s schedule different than mine? How come the guys seem to have an extra mountain hiking activity that isn’t part of my plan?” She crumpled the sheet of paper in her hand demonstratively, crossing her arms over her chest.

Being subjected to Momoi’s wrath turned out to be a heavier task than Wakamatsu would’ve ever believed. He threw a glare at Daiki, who was now standing behind Satsuki. His pose was slouched and his pinkie stuck in his ear, his aura the epitome of disinterest.

“Aomine, you…!” Wakamatsu started, shaking his fist in Daiki’s general direction.

The navy-haired boy shrugged his shoulders.

“I didn’t know it was supposed to be a secret from her. Don’t blame me for your mistakes, captain,” he drawled lazily. He dragged out the last syllable of the title in a way Wakamatsu could almost swear was intended to walk all over his nerves.

“Don’t change the topic, Wakamatsu-san!” she snapped waspishly, pulling his attention back to her. Her foot was now tapping testily in a staccato rhythm against the floor. “I still haven’t heard a good reason as to why I am excluded from an  _obviously team-oriented activity_.”

The blond swallowed dryly at the intensity of the girl’s gaze. He figured out there was no way out of this now—especially since she seemed to take it worse than he had expected—so honestly was probably going to be his best policy.

“I didn’t want to  _exclude you_  from anything, Momoi,” he started. Satsuki’s conviction was reflected in the wry scowl she deigned him with. “It’s just that it’s a steep climb. The route isn’t very secure, so I didn’t want to risk anything happening to you while we hike. It will be a long exercise, so coach and I thought it would be best to have you sit that one out.”

Daiki’s brows quirked at the mention of their coach, whereas Satsuki’s brows knitted a bit more tightly over her eyes. Coach Harasawa was oblivious to the storm that was brewing in the gym, blissfully making final arrangements for the weekend in the other room.

Very suave of Wakamatsu, trying to shift the blame on someone else besides himself, Daiki noted mentally. The corner of his mouth curled into a lopsided smirk, his hands jamming into his training shorts’ pockets. Too bad something like shared responsibility wasn’t about to deter Satsuki’s anger.

“Be that as it may,” she enunciated slowly, making all the boys around her aware that she wasn’t planning on letting their coach get out of this unscathed either. “I will not stand for you leaving me out of team-based activities. Have I not proven time and time again to you numbskulls that anything you can handle,  _I_ can handle, too?”

She was practically in Wakamatsu’s face, expression twisted in her outrage. It made Wakamatsu wonder where their height difference had melted off in that moment; that is, until he realized he was basically hunching under the heaviness of her suddenly-turned-imposing presence.

“Have I not proven time and time again that I am to be considered your equal? On the court and outside of it?  _Especially_ outside of it?” She poked Wakamatsu in the chest with her index finger, spitting out question after rhetoric question without waiting for a response. “You have  _no right_  to exclude me from the mountain hiking. I appreciate your concern, but it’s misplaced. For all I know, if I let you hike on your own, the inn people will have to spend the night looking for you all over the mountain when you  _get lost in the woods_. Because you boys are absolutely  _hopeless_  in anything that is  _not_  basketball—am I right or am I right?”

Wakamatsu opened his mouth to respond—rather imprudently so—but Satsuki lifted up the finger she had been jabbing in his chest to silence him.

“I don’t want to hear another word on this topic. I’m going hiking with you guys and that’s final!” She nodded curtly to herself, pleased with her deduction. “Now, excuse me, I need to have a word with coach as well.”

Aomine, Wakamatsu and Sakurai stared—rather dumbfounded—after her disappearing petite figure as she stomped away angrily. They were left to dwell in the silence of her departure, her admonishing sermon still weighing heavy in the air around them.

Daiki, predictably—as the person who’d been on the receiving end of most of Satsuki’s (rare though they were) angry outbursts—was the first to recover. His expression morphed into a sly smirk and he focused Wakamatsu out of the corner of his eye with a knowing look.

“Seriously, though, you must’ve learned  _nothing_  about Satsuki in the past year to think taking her out of the hiking was a good idea,” he said with an impish chuckle.

The ass was obviously enjoying Wakamatsu’s plight.

The blond captain shot Daiki a warning look, a vein pulsing on his forehead.

“Just  _shut it_ , Aomine. I can’t handle you grating my nerves right now. It would be un-captainly to bash your head in, and I’m not sure I can hold myself back if you continue gloating.”

Daiki snorted a laugh, smile morphing into a full-blown grin that irked the hell out of his captain.

“Yes, sir,” the ace drawled out, dragging out the syllables again in that mocking sing-song tone of his.

* * *

The weekend rolled by before they knew it.

It came to the Touou boys as somewhat of a surprise how quickly their manager seemed to bury the hatchet about the whole hiking thing.

Instead, she seemed to be in rather elated spirits on the entire trip towards the inn.

She was humming a tune under her breath while they were on the train, and she appeared to be looking forward to the morning activity if her enthusiasm at dinner Friday night was anything to go by.

And, surely enough, when the next morning rolled by, she was the person who was most alert, most awake and most peppy about the whole ordeal.

The boys brushed their teeth lazily, taking turns in the inn bathroom which wasn’t small but certainly wasn’t made to accommodate twenty-something teenage boys at once. Their manager made sure to drop by and urge them to hurry up so they would be able to set off sooner.

It was only around the time when they were ready to leave, his club members somewhat sullen to be dragged out of bed at the crack of dawn, that Wakamatsu understood the reason Momoi had been so upset.

It wasn’t just the displeasure of being condescended against, as someone who isn’t equal to the boys around her. No: she’d been  _itching_  for a mountain hiking trek for a while now (probably), and felt scorned to have been excluded of it when opportunity to set out on one finally arose.

The captain also had to admit she was completely right. Even with their coach coming along with them, the guy was just a directionally challenged as the rest of them. Very few of their members could even read maps—much less mountain path maps—so having their information analyst with them was a blessing unlike any other.

After the first hour passed and the sun started shining brightly through the tree leaves at the hikers, the Touou boys started livening up. They came to appreciate the trip to the Great Outdoors, relishing the feel of the clean mountain air filling their lungs.

Not to mention the feeling of having to utilize their entire bodies in order to move themselves onwards during the steep climb uphill.

They were about halfway up their designated trek when Satsuki’s chipper ambiance started getting the better of her. She started veering slightly off-track in order to take pictures of small mountain lakes in the distance, or a deer watching them curiously from the nearby thicket.

She kept making little pauses, picking flowers and taking photos, before jogging uphill to catch up with her group.

Daiki had been fully mentally prepared that this was what was going to happen when she’d insisted she come with them. There was  _no way_ for her to quietly enjoy something the same way the rest of them did. Besides, she’d always been the kind of person who loved trips like this. Plus, she much preferred the mountains to the sea, so it was all within the realm of his predictions.

That said, knowing that should anything happen to her, her family and his both would hold him responsible—not to mention quite possibly feel entitled to crucify him, or at the very least bodily harm him—he made sure to maintain a pace that would keep him walking in parallel with her at the back of the group.

He did it the same way he usually did: without making any comment about it, without making a big deal of it, instead only verbally poking her every now and then when she started falling too far behind.

They maintained this idyllic system without a hitch for the first hour and a half.

Daiki wasn’t a big fan of hiking or the kind of outdoors that didn’t include a basketball court in any way, which was why he was relatively bored with the climb.

His muscles were toned enough from all the exercise he’d done honing his skills on the court for him not to be phased the least by the steep, trying trek up. Some of the freshmen were already wheezing, their tongues all but hanging out of their mouths like ties. He pitied the poor bastards, but couldn’t be arsed to pay much attention to anything other than getting this crap over and done with.

His idyllic, barely even present spirit got a violent start when he heard a familiar shriek from a little ways behind him.

His head snapped back in the direction the sound had come from—just like the rest of the team did—but he went in motion before anyone else did.

He was sliding down the slope, grabbing onto tree trunks for support until he was at Satsuki’s side faster than the other boys could even wonder what was going on, what the commotion was about.

“What did you do? Are you okay?” he queried quickly, helping her pull herself upright from where she’d fallen. She had nearly tumbled off downhill. He banished thoughts of what would’ve happen if she really  _had_  rolled down uncontrollably.

His worry intensified when he saw that her face was pale as a sheet.

It took her several seconds to compose herself enough to speak. In that time, Wakamatsu, the coach and a few of the other boys had created a wide circle around them.

“I-I’m fine,” she stammered, her voice wavering. There was a twitch in her facial muscles when she tried to stand upright properly. “I just slipped on a mossy rock. It’s no big deal.”

She pushed away gently from Daiki’s hand propping her up. The pink-haired girl made a wobbly step on one leg and then tried to put her weight on her other. The sound she made should’ve been another pained shout, but she managed to muffle it. Instead, the most heart-wrenching whimper of agony tore from her chest, making all the boys wince at how her leg gave up completely from underneath her.

Her childhood friend grabbed her roughly by the arm before she could crash face-first in the dirt. He growled in irritation, forcing her to sit down so they could check the damage.

She resisted a little, maintaining that she was fine, they could continue, stop fretting like a mother hen already, Dai-chan, it doesn’t suit you. Not that he listened—when had he ever? He took off her shoe without any preamble, lifting up her slacks’ leg while rolling down her sock to bare her leg to their eyes.

A couple of the fainter of heart boys sucked on a breath through their teeth when the blue, swelling bruise of her ankle got exposed. Daiki didn’t make a sound; instead, his expression only hardened, the glare in his eyes intensifying as he shifted his cobalt gaze to focus it on his childhood friend’s face.

She made a repentant grimace, trying to cover up the bruise with her clothes, to shield her failure from their view.

“It’s not such a big deal. I can continue. Let’s move on.”

She made the mistake of trying to get up by putting her weight on her wounded leg. She ended up biting her lip almost till she drew blood from the effort of keeping her pain from becoming vocal.

Daiki growled angrily again, pressing strongly down on her shoulder to keep her seated. By that time all of their teammates had gathered around them, peering over each other’s shoulders to see what was going on.

“It looks pretty bad. We can’t be sure if it’s just swollen or she broke it. I don’t think it’s a good idea to walk on it until someone can tell for sure,” coach Harasawa muttered pensively, examining Satsuki’s bruised leg tentatively.

“I’m sure it’s fine—” the manager started hastily again, attempting to make another bullshit excuse. Her childhood friend’s eyes flashed angrily.

“Can you just  _shut up_  for a moment?” he snapped scathingly, an air of finality in his tone. “You’re obviously  _not_  going to be walking any further, so just fucking  _drop it_.”

From all the time they’d spent in the pair’s presence—and the fact it was usually Momoi who was doing the nagging and the bossing around—one would be led to believe that she wouldn’t take Daiki talking in such a blatantly disrespectful way to her easily. Some of the boys that had known them longer fully expected Momoi to lash back and for the whole argument to escalate to ugly heights quickly.

Instead, when he chastised her verbally like that, the girl clamped her mouth shut and pinned her gaze to the soil under her fingers, face twisting in guilt.

“Seriously, I told you to  _watch_  where you walk. How do you even end up like this? Dumbass…” he grumbled irately, covering up her ankle again.

The pink-haired girl didn’t say anything. She kept scowling furiously, her lips forming a taut line from the effort of keeping her thoughts to herself. Still, the lines of her face betrayed the fact she was aware he was right to be saying these things to her, that she was equally upset with herself for getting in this situation.

Wakamatsu heaved a sigh, rubbing his neck nervously.

“Well, in this case, we should probably head down the way we came,” he muttered. “It looks pretty painful, so she should have it checked out as soon as possible.”

The captain surveyed the state his information specialist was in with another deep exhale.

“This is why I wanted to keep you out of this trek,” he grumbled ill-temperedly. He thought himself to be justly displeased—at least until he saw the murderous glare Aomine aimed his way.

Wakamatsu wasn’t a man who was easily cowed, but the look in Aomine’s eyes sent a shiver down his spine, making his blood curdle in his veins.

The blond was oblivious as to the reason he’d deserved the glare, because he didn’t notice the hurt look that crossed Satsuki’s face at his claim. She didn’t take well to being a burden to the boys in any way—she was constantly striving hard exactly so she could avoid that. She would’ve done a fine job getting through this trip safely, too, if she hadn’t been so perky about it.

Not to mention that it wasn’t her fault she’d slipped. It could’ve been any of the guys to have made a wrong judgement on where to place their feet. None of them were good at this mountain hiking business, so making her feel like crap for drawing the short stick was unacceptable for the ace.

Daiki took off his backpack—something every single one of them had taken when they left the inn—and passed it to Sakurai with an imperious look on his face. The brunette didn’t have an option to do anything other than take the proffered object.

“We’ll take the shortest route up and then go down the other way to the inn. Like it was in the plan.” He said it so firmly he left no room for discussions. He stripped off his jacket as he spoke, handing it to the coach this time. “We’ll go as fast as we can while altering the initial plan as little as possible. That should be fine by everybody. Right?”

He sent Wakamatsu an evil sideways glance. It made his captain bristle. It wasn’t like he had said the things he had because he had a grudge against Momoi or something! He only had her best interests in mind when he’d made that comment—nothing else! Who did that brat think he was, addressing his upperclassman like that?!

Before anyone could think to say something in response, Daiki was already crouching in front of Satsuki with his back to her.

Her frown eased up for the first time since she fell. She directed her most puzzled expression at her childhood friend.

He turned to throw an expectant, exasperated glare at her over his shoulder when nothing happened for a while.

“Well? What are you waiting for? Get on,” he prodded her, his tone clipped.

Only then did Satsuki realize that he was planning to carry her on his back. His entire previous tirade suddenly made a lot more sense.

“I can’t let you do that,” she resisted firmly. She didn’t move a muscle from where she was, adamantly refusing to do as he commanded.

Her reaction only made Daiki frown deepen.

“Sh-she’s right, Aomine-san!” Sakurai piped up, drawing their ace’s azure glare to himself. He stiffened when it shifted its focus to him, but pulled himself together to add, “I’m sorry, but I think two of us should support her up and walk side by side.”

He didn’t have to say it; even Satsuki herself realized that no matter how light she was (or thought she was), she was still a healthy sixteen-year-old girl. Carrying the weight of a whole other person besides your own was a very trying task, especially in this steep upward climb.

Even if it was Dai-chan, he couldn’t handle this without batting an eyelash. She didn’t plan to let him, either.

However, the navy-haired boy himself seemed to think differently.

“What makes you think that two people acting like crutches for a third would be a better idea on this hill? The way I see it, there’s an even higher chance of the casualties’ number rising that way.”

The boys averted their eyes from him, realizing that the tanned teen was probably right.

“I can handle Satsuki. You guys just lead the way properly.” He turned his heavy, imposing gaze upon his childhood friend, waiting for her to climb on his back.

She did as he demanded, eventually. It took them a minute or two to settle in a way that was comfortable and secure for him to hold her without her slipping from his grasp. She needed to find a way to put her hands around his neck so she didn’t end up strangling him.

After several minutes since they first stopped, the Touou group set off again.

For her part, Satsuki was quite surprised at how quiet Daiki got once she agreed to the piggyback ride. She’d been certain he’d use the time after everyone started climbing again to start biting her head off about being a klutz. She’d been certain he would gripe and complain how heavy she was and what a pain it was to be constantly fixing her messes or some such thing.

He did none of those. Instead, he just carried her quietly, barely breaking a sweat from the addition of weight to his own.

When they sat down to rest a little forty minutes later, though, Satsuki noticed that he drank a lot more water than he did on their previous break. His brow was glistening with a thin sheen of sweat. His chest was rising and falling a bit more frequently than before he’d been tasked with carrying her around.

Still he didn’t breathe a word in complaint. When the other boys offered to take his place, he didn’t even give them a chance to finish the sentence before brushing them off.

“We’re fine; don’t worry about us,” he told his teammates brusquely while hefting Satsuki up on his back again. “Just keep walking, will ya?”

The Touou boys shared a look, shrugging their shoulders. They did as advised, moving on their designated path.

Daiki trudged up the hill with Satsuki on his back, remaining as stoically silent as before.

His comment, though, had struck a chord with his childhood friend.

He’d told them that  _they_  were fine; there was no need to worry for  _them_. It had come so naturally to him he didn’t even consider how it could sound, how it could be misinterpreted.

Yet she couldn’t bring herself to begrudge him the slip of tongue, the way she usually did.

The reason she couldn’t was because there were times in their lives—a multitude of occasions, really—when she’d made him feel like he was burdening her, just like there were times when she’d felt like she was burdening him.

None of those times did she feel as guilty as she felt now, while he had to carry her, physically carry her, for an extended period of time.

Not only was she burdening her team with her idiocy, but now she was making Daiki’s life hard by having him feel the physical burden of her on his very back. She was being a deadweight to him—the thing that had always horrified her the most, scared her right down to her very  _soul_ —not only figuratively, but literally as well.

She could feel the strain it was putting on his body to climb up in the way his shoulders tensed, the muscles flexed underneath her hold on him. The heat was coming off him in waves, and it made her feel even guiltier than she already did when he started huffing and puffing with the effort of striding on.

Overwhelmed by emotions, coupled with the pain occasionally shooting up her leg from her wounded ankle every time he jostled her a little more, Satsuki pressed her forehead against the skin at the back of his neck, burying her face in his warmth.

“Dai-chan…”

“What?” he barked out in a mock-exasperated tone.

“I’m sorry for being such a burden…” Her voice cracked. Her fingers dug deeper into the flesh on his shoulders with the effort of reining in her feelings.

Daiki stopped dead in his tracks, throwing her the most unreadable look over his shoulder. She glanced up shyly, guilt-ridden, when he didn’t continue moving for a while. She caught his eye, and even though she couldn’t place even half the emotions she saw in his deep azure gaze in that moment, something about the peculiar mix of them set her spirit at ease a little.

“What are you even saying?” he grumbled ill-temperedly, setting off again. There was no bite to his admonishment. “This is no big deal. Stop making it something more than it is.”

And maybe her swollen ankle wasn’t a big deal to handle for him. Still, the fact he didn’t nag her about it, that he didn’t moan and groan about the additional strain he had to go through because of her, was a lot bigger than what he was trying to play it down as.

She smiled to herself, the urge to cry growing stronger than ever as she clung onto her best friend’s back for dear life.

“Trying to make yourself look cool or something?” she inquired quickly, her voice sounding watery.

“Oh, you already figured it out?” he said with a smirk, planting his feet firmly in the dirt while stepping onwards.

“Yeah, and you should stop. It’s pretty creepy, you know. It doesn’t suit your character at all,” she blurted out, pressing her cheek against the base of his neck.

“How rude. That’s some way to treat your saviour!”

She snorted.

“It’s just my leg, not my  _life_ , you dork,” she chided playfully.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Same difference.”

She would’ve kept up their usual dynamic if she hadn’t caught the labouring of his breathing in his words. Making him talk while carrying both of them uphill was very taxing, even for someone was insanely durable as Dai-chan.

So she mercifully shut up, letting him focus on bringing them onwards.

“Dai-chan?” she started quietly, her voice barely above a whisper, some minutes later.

“Hmm?”

She paused for so long after he let her know he was listening that he almost thought he should ask her what she wanted outright.

Before she could, she mumbled against the skin at the nape of his neck, “Thank you.”

The only response he gave her was a noncommittal grunt.

* * *

The Touou gang got back to the inn a couple of hours later.

By that time, it was safe to say that there wasn’t a single member of the basketball team that  _wasn’t_ impressed with their ace’s physical fitness.

Not only had he carried their manager the entire way down the mountain, but he also didn’t seem overly worse for wear after he’d taken a bath and eaten some lunch. He went about his day normally, even taking part in practice—despite coach Harasawa’s insistence that he skip this time.

The team spent a good hour or so soaking in the hot spring of the inn that night before dinner. It worked wonders on Daiki’s taut muscles, making him feel a lot better about the whole ordeal than he would have if there were no spring to enjoy.

After dinner, most of the guys decided to go out and play some basketball. Daiki chose to amuse himself by watching some TV while yawning every few minutes.

There was a knock at his door. He wasn’t surprised to see Satsuki on the other side once the door opened.

“Hey,” she greeted him, a bit more ceremonious than was usual.

“Hey,” he echoed, yawning into his palm again.

“How are you feeling?” she asked almost shyly, seating herself next to him.

He gave her a perplexed look.

“Shouldn’t I be asking  _you_ that?” He snorted, facing away from her with a huff.

Satsuki shook her head.

“Just drop it, Dai-chan,” she told him tersely, averting her gaze from him. “Are your back and shoulders okay?”

“I’m fit as a fiddle, stop fretting.” He narrowed his brows mockingly, pulling the corners of his face in a comic grimace he aimed her way. “It makes your eyebrows scrunch up like this. You look like a worried grandma when you do that.”

She swatted his arm none too gently, glaring wryly at him. She rubbed the bridge of her nose in aggravation—whether with him or herself, he didn’t know—while he turned his attention back to his TV show.

When he felt her fingers on his shoulders, it gave him a start. He turned his attention to her anew, opening his mouth to say something before she robbed him of the chance to.

“At least let me do this much. Okay?”

He grumbled for a while, but before long she had him sighing in relief while she worked out the kinks in his shoulders and back.

She dug her fingers into his taut muscles, eliciting sounds of varying degrees of relief as she did so. She kneaded his flesh carefully, deliberately, moving slowly down the span of his spine before pressing her palms up and down his sides in a soothing motion. She rubbed concentric circles into his back, repeating more frequently the ones that had him exhaling more heavily through his nose.

When he started melting in her hold, she ordered him to lay down, climbing onto his back and intensifying her ministrations. Thanks to the more comfortable angle, and the fact she could use her whole body’s weight to press down on the right points, she reduced him to an incoherent mess in no time at all.

For all the resistance he put up at first, it was rather surprising that he ended up falling asleep under her deft fingers.

His breathing evened underneath her hands. She smiled privately, covering him up with the comforter of his futon and tucking him in.

She watched him sleep blissfully—like he hadn’t a care in the world—and felt something in her chest swell. She sighed profoundly, easing her head down to press a tender kiss to his cheek.

“Thank you, ‘my saviour’,” she whispered to his sleeping form.

Her fingers twined briefly in his hair, petting the shock of navy spikes, before she let him go. She rose slowly to her feet, taking care to balance her weight well lest she should tumble down gracelessly and wake him up.

They’d been together through thick and thin. There had been good times, just as there had been tough times, too. Over the years, she’d cried a lot because of him, and she had cried a lot  _for_ him. There were times when he’d been a very difficult to deal with person, a perpetual pain in her ass on daily basis.

However, not for a second had she ever considered him to be a burden—a weight tedious to carry, dragging her down in any sense, shape or form.

So it was very reassuring to be made aware than he didn’t think of her as a burden either – no matter how troublesome she sometimes ended up being.

She made a mental note to be more careful in the future, so that neither of them would have to experience this kind of hardship ever again.

Regardless of how trashy she’d felt the entire morning—and sometime of the evening, thanks to her aching ankle—Satsuki had to admit that the appreciative sounds he’d awarded her with as she massaged him had been pretty good balm for the soul. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Definitely cliche, but a cliche I have not seen in this fandom? Ergo, it had to be done, okay? xD I am a sucker for this kind of thing, thus why I took it upon myself to do it. I feel like it didn't come out quite as shippy as I was hoping to make it, but... ehh... Initially this was supposed to have a follow-up chapter, but I have no notions left for it any longer. Maybe if I get into the AoMomo writing mood again, I might manage to grind out a continuation that would make this the preamble for shippy stuff? Hmmm... I make no promises, people!
> 
> Regardless of my flunky self's lack of consistency, comments and critique are very welcome!


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